In an Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON), route relation may exist between different connections of the same service, between different services, and between connections of different services. For example, a service has two connections, which are a work connection and a protection connection, then route relation is formed between the two connections, and it is also route relation that no resource can be shared between two services. The route relation needs to be managed by a management plan (namely, a network management system), or a control plan, so that a service can be effectively protected and recovered in case of failure.
As for route relation management of connections, methods, such as a manual route constraint method and a connection correlation method, are provided in the prior art. In the manual route constraint method, route resource that a route of a connection cannot pass or must pass is designated during the establishment of the route of the connection; in the connection correlation method, connections are correlated, then resource data is exchanged between services, and a route constraint is conducted during a route calculation according to the exchanged resource data.
The existing methods above are respectively disadvantaged in that: the manual route constraint method cannot provide real-time constraint correlation information when rerouting occurs in connections, thus failing to realize route relation management after the rerouting occurs in connections; the connection correlation method cannot reflect resource conditions in real time, although it obtains the relevant information for constraining the route by exchanging resource between correlated connections it actually only obtains the snapshots of the resource, therefore the connection correlation method cannot realize real route relation management of connections. Based on the route relation management mechanisms provided by the prior art, the probability of a conflict between a calculated route and other routes during the establishment of connections may be relatively high due to the above problems, but no effective method is provided in existing route establishment methods to reduce the probability of route conflict.